astroturf to the end
Commenters at Big Government, yesterday were skeptical about the sea of white lab coats seen in the audience of the White House lawn for the President’s public option photo op, yesterday.:
•Physicians do NOT wear their labcoats outside of the hospital or office. This is a GOTCHA. I also do NOT know of any of my physician associates who support Obamas health plan.
•I was married to a doctor and spent countless hours around them, and when I saw that picture I just thought “HOLY SH!T I’m living in the new soviet union.”
While I have no doubt that Obama had no trouble finding a flock of single payer doctors to show up for his photo op, I do think it’s funny that the White House was desperate enough to pass out white lab coats to make the photo op perfectly-perfect.
A sea of 150 white-coated doctors, all enthusiastically supportive of the president and representing all 50 states, looked as if they were at a costume party as they posed in the Rose Garden before hearing Obama’s pitch for the Democratic overhaul bills moving through Congress.
The physicians, all invited guests, were told to bring their white lab coats to make sure that TV cameras captured the image.
But some docs apparently forgot, failing to meet the White House dress code by showing up in business suits or dresses.
So the White House rustled up white coats for them and handed them to the suited physicians who had taken seats in the sun-splashed lawn area.
‘You look very spiffy in your coats.’ Obama told the group of doctors after his aides had handed out a great many of them.
UPDATE:
Patterico is not sure that all of the doctors in attendance at the President’s photo op were even pro-ObamaCare . According to the testimony of one doctor who was invited, the vetting process was not terribly rigorous, as he was invited, and he has led the fight to pass state legislation and constitutional amendments to prohibit individual insurance mandates. He wonders if some of the doctors who were there, were just flattered to be invited to the White House.
MORE:
Michelle Malkin called it Halloween at the White House, lol.
Perfunction goes down memory lane: White House Props Up Unpopular Policy With Props
RELATED:
Getting little media attention, last month, hundreds of anti-Obamacare doctors also demonstrated in DC…
You may have heard of doctors who greedily amputate legs, and tear out tonsils when it’s not necessary…that would be these guys:
More on the September 10th Doctors Against Obamacare March at El Marco’s.
UPDATE:
Welcome Ace of Spades morons!
Would it kill ya to comment?
UPDATE II:
Inevitable:
Scene Stealing Squirrel Crashes ObamaCare Photo-op
Nice Deb 
Confirmed: Doctors Larry, Mo, and Curly are in charge of Obamacare….film at eleven.
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Oh my gosh!! A staged scene of white coat doctors willing and ready for a photo-op?! How utterly ridiculous! Did they think that their propagandist move would not be detected?
This comment was priceless:
•I was married to a doctor and spent countless hours around them, and when I saw that picture I just thought “HOLY SH!T I’m living in the new soviet union.”
Yep…
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I’m surprised they didn’t give them those big old chrome reflectors that doctors used to use to look up your undercarriage back in da day. Sure, they’ve been obsolete since Edison but they look cool, don’t they?
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It would have been great if he handed out speculums, saws, rubber hammers and xray sheets with the coats and choreographed a scene where the doctors all raised their tools to cheer Obama.
They should have splashed some red dye on some of those coats, make it look like the docs all rushed there out of surgery to attend this most important event.
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Too funny!
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It would have been great if he handed out speculums
HAHAHAHA!
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pajama momma Says:
October, 6, 2009 at 12:45 pm
It would have been great if he handed out speculums
HAHAHAHA!
Or would that be “specula”?
Lol.
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>>Or would that be “specula”?
You must know my latin teacher.
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This guy’s got more props than Carrothead.
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I’m not a (good) doctor, but I play one on the WH lawn.
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It’s Carrot Top…not Carrothead.
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Sparky Says:
October, 6, 2009 at 9:48 am
Confirmed: Doctors Larry, Mo, and Curly are in charge of Obamacare….film at eleven.
Calling Doctor Howard,Doctor Fine,Doctor Howard!
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Dear Fellow Americans,
I was in the Rose Garden as one of the doctors representing one of the states of the United States.
I know for a fact that all the white coats by these 50 doctors were owned by those doctors. I know because we met two hours prior to going to the White House.
Some VIP’s who joined the event were given the white coats, but the white coats on the doctors representing our Union were real.
Now, more to the point, doctors across America support health care reform. Even the AMA has endorsed the plans proposed. You all are singing a very old song, the one that goes “anything the government does is bad,” but that song is killing, disabling, and bankrupting I care for in my practice.
At the last count 525,000 of 700,000 American doctors support reform.
There is no AstroTurf here, only real doctors caring about real patients.
Dr. L.
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Dear Dr. L-
Nobody in their right mind doesn’t want health care reform. Likewise, nobody in their right mind wants a government run health insurance system. We already have one of those and not only does it under pay doctors and hosptials (which I’m sure as a doctor you are well aware) but it forces private plans to charge higher premiums to cover the shortfall. It also happens to be tens of trillions of dollars in debt which of us fellow Americans will be paying for.
To say that those who don’t want the plan that Dems are trying to shove down our throats with lies, obfuscation and deceit, are anti-health care reform is not only a very old song it is also patently false.
There are literally thousands of health insurance companies across this country but in any given market only a handful by law are allowed to compete. This is insane. Tort reform is also long overdue. Again, I’m sure you are well aware of the costs of malpractice insurance and defensive medicine. These would remove huge costs to the health insurance system and everyone knows it. Yet, the Dems reflexively fight these changes hammer and tong. Take your case to them.
Frankly, I don’t give a damn if 100% of doctors want socialized health care. The majority of Americans, including those of us who pay the bills, don’t.
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Michelle Malkin had a report on Obama’s single payer docs, today:
Obama’s spin doctors belong to a group called “Doctors for America”
***
The decidedly un-grass-roots sponsors of the Doctors for America launch were Democrat Sen. Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and the left-wing Center for American Progress (which is run by liberal operative John Podesta and underwritten by far Left billionaire George Soros).
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/10/07/spin-doctors-for-obamacare/
Seems pretty astroturf to me.
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At the last count 525,000 of 700,000 American doctors support reform.
Oh yes, the latest poll results (which give me only 507,500 when I multiply it out, but whatever). The phrasing of the question gives a biased answer: doctors faced with the problem of treating uninsured patients and with the reimbursement procedures of private insurers are naturally going to opt for a change. Of some sort. By specifying the public option as the only change, however, you’ve made the choice: change or no change.
You all are singing a very old song, the one that goes “anything the government does is bad,” but that song is killing, disabling, and bankrupting I care for in my practice.
Well, it’s certainly done a poor job in the health care industry so far, so though it may be old, it definitely applies here.
You should note that all of us would like to see some changes in health care. We’d like to know how much procedures cost before we opt for treatment. None of this paying mysterious bills that keep trickling in for months after a hospital stay. We’d like to have the finances worked out before treatment, including a guarantee by the insurance company that they won’t reject our claims after we’ve incurred the costs. And we’d like to know that our doctors aren’t battling the insurance companies to get paid.
We’d all like to see cost growth slow down, but we’d like to try that before we commit to a complete revamping of the existing system. We don’t believe in the fantastical cost savings claimed by Orszag, and we don’t believe that the public option will end up any better financially than Medicare.
But we don’t want to be fined, taxed, or jailed for deciding that we don’t want to carry insurance, particularly since it constitutes a huge injustice to the young and healthy population. We don’t want government committees deciding on what constitutes an acceptable insurance plan, or providing one-size-fits-all ‘recommendations’ for treatment (where ‘recommendations’ will become mandatory as soon as the first malpractice suit is filed against a doctor who deviated from them).
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thanks. some great infomation here
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it is interesting to look back on these critizisms of the healthcare plan and how they continue hold their meaning years later.
it is not scary to me that he passed out lab coats, although it is like painting the roses red, i think he just wanted the audience to know without text who he was addressing in his speech.
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Great web page you’ve got going here.
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